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It's the holidays, college and university students are mostly back at home, and here's a thought. There's a great movie out about Abraham Lincoln, and with no classes to interfere, they ought to go to it and learn some American history. — Many students, you may not realize, don't know beans about their own country's past. Back some years ago, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni commissioned a study of how much seniors at 55 elite universities knew about fundamental, high school-level historical matters, and guess what. A startling 81 percent got either a "D" or an "F" on a test.

This year, the group commissioned another study, this one of college graduates, and found just a sliver knew James Madison was the father of the Constitution or George Washington the victorious general at Yorktown. Only 17 percent could identify the source of the phrase "government of the people, by the people and for the people."

The issue is not one of student stupidity, but of institutional neglect. The council has conducted another study showing you can get out of most institutions of higher learning without taking the kinds of courses that turn on the lights for you as a human being and a citizen, giving you a broad understanding of this world. By the reckoning of the council, schools ought to be requiring courses in U.S. history or government, science, math, literature, economics a foreign language and composition, and most are sloppy about it.

Only 2 percent of 1,070 surveyed schools get an "A" for mandating study in at least six of these knowledge areas, and I am proud to say I have taught at one of them, Colorado Christian University. By contrast, one university that received a "D" is supposedly one of the best in America, a place that is unbelievably tough to get into and proffers a degree that opens career doors hither, yon and in between. I mean Harvard, whose failings are the subject of "Privilege," a splendidly written 2005 book by Ross Gregory Douthat.

Douthat, a conservative columnist at the ultra-liberal New York Times, says being a student at Harvard is more nearly about success than learning, even though, yes, there are lots of brilliant people around, including professors who inflate your grades even as too few offer up terrific classes. One problem is that there's no guidance about what to take, and the choices available in core curriculum subject areas can be leaps and bounds from anything central and substantive.

All of which brings us to the "Lincoln" movie. Let's first get the criticism out of the way, namely that there are some false moments lessening instead of focusing the drama. But the movie as a whole is an intense experience of a great man pulling off the great accomplishment of winning a House of Representatives vote furthering the 13th Amendment that ended slavery in the United States. I am a fan of Lincoln and books about him and found the depiction of him incredibly convincing, as did some historians who have also commented that the movie is basically sound in its wondrously moving portrayal of events.

The short of it is that someone could go to this movie and learn more about a crucial episode in American history than during a four-year stay at one of hundreds of colleges, including the fact that Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was the source of the phrase about government of, by and for all of us. They would not have to spend a ton on tuition, either, or end up owing enough to the federal government's ultra-inflationary student loan program to be in debt for years.

Our universities need reform, serious, tuition-reducing, curriculum-improving reform that also sees professors putting teaching above publishing as the way to keep from perishing. Here and there are hints of steps in hopeful directions, such as Texas and Florida developing online degree programs costing a total of $10,000. Minus some experiments that work, the hurt will be grievous to a whole slew of people, and to something else as well: our American future.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado.

Previously:

12/12/12: Immigration issues solve themselves
12/06/12: Durbin's deficiency
11/29/12: Man of the century
11/21/12: A big scandal coming?
11/14/12: U.S. should follow the Swedish path
11/07/12: Hanging from a poll
•10/31/12: A dream that wouldn't come true
•10/29/12: When the 'kooks' and 'racists' turn out to be your ideological allies
•10/24/12: The pettiness refuge
•10/18/12: An interruption that tells a bigger tale
•10/17/12: A recovery that wasn't
•10/12/12: Big Bird squabble points to something real
•10/11/12: The 'war' you don't hear about --- the one on average Americans
•08/22/12: Obama leadership: Romney's returns trump road to recovery
•08/15/12: Saving Medicare the Ryan way
•08/01/12: Combatting free speech
•07/25/12: Good and bad reactions to Colorado horror
•07/18/12: Apology time for Obama
•07/16/12: Free markets solve climate change threats
•07/11/12: Humans and particles and those who would order them
•07/06/12: Why we'll miss Andy Griffith
•07/05/12: All will feel Affordable Care Act's bite
•07/02/12: A social solution --- homes with dads
•06/27/12: Being a 'nation of immigrants' is not an excuse
•06/20/12: Barack Obama the autocrat
•06/18/12: Bradbury's lessons for today
•06/13/12: Should this leaking administration sink?
•06/11/12: Simpson bashes back on reform
•06/05/12: Legalize sugary drinks, ban dangerous drugs
•06/04/12: Keep America from going Greek
•06/01/12: Don't believe in Obama's fairy tales
•05/30/12: Writing a book? Beats prison
•05/23/12: Student loans fail students
•05/21/12: Europeanizing America into crisis
•05/16/12: Obama a bully, too
•05/15/12: Walker recall vote could swing national pension policy
•05/07/12: Bumbling, fumbling, benighted, old Washington near tipping point where freedom is done for
•05/02/12: The Communists cannot be happy
•04/30/12: There's no objective truth, least of all concerning behavior
•04/25/12: Forgive the extremist?
•04/23/12: Educational excellence is a game
•04/18/12: Obama's interventions help a few by the most autocratic, complicated, ineffective means possible, yet hurt many more
•04/16/12: Overregulation strikes again: The nanny state threatens to turn us into children
•04/11/12: Obama is not bonkers
•04/04/12: Will America vote against authoritarianism?
•04/02/12: 'Tipping point' on federal restraint approaches
•03/28/12: Obama truth from an open mike
•03/21/12: The progressive campaign for voter fraud
•03/19/12: Public pensions will get us if we don't watch out
•03/14/12: Politics needs reporting, not speculation
•03/12/12: Home of the free, the brave, the endangered
•03/07/12: Obama used Limbaugh as scapegoat
•03/05/12: Campaign substance lost in media melodrama
•03/01/12: When Big Brother drowns
•02/24/12: Obama goes gaseous on gas
•02/22/12: Political tears for trust in personal empowerment --- except in the bedroom
•02/17/12: Of cut-off ears and silenced mouths
•02/15/12: Obama is a joke whose antics aren't funny
•02/10/12: An energy boom looms, despite Obama
•02/08/12: Obama's assault on faith
•02/03/12: Can Romney get serious?
•01/27/12: Obama is like an Italian ship captain
•01/25/12: Newt Gingrich's first 100 days
•01/20/12: Obama's Keystone pipeline lies
•01/18/12: Critics worse than urinating Marines
•01/13/12: Ron Paul is a cartoonish character
•01/11/12: Newt Gingrich upset by Mitt Romney's brilliance
•01/09/12: How about regulating presidents, too?
•01/04/12: How America smothers itself
•12/30/11: A tax break that helps break the nation
•12/28/11: Watch out for the banana peel, Newt
•12/21/11: A tale of two men
•12/16/11: Strange happenings in Russia
•12/14/11: Tim Tebow is a man of character
•12/09/11: A populist, envy-mongering fraud divisively exacerbating resentment among different groups of Americans
•12/07/11: Tax games threaten nation
•12/05/11: Why Wal-Mart serves us better than Barney Frank
•11/30/11: Not writing off Newt
•11/28/11: Answers to the Iranian threat
•11/23/11: Failure of the incumbency investment
•11/18/11: Occupiers: Chop off their heads!
•11/16/11: Obama asks jobless to sacrifice
•11/09/11: Michael Moore's insufferable occupation
•11/04/11: Political tipping point is coming
•11/02/11: Idealogues versus 7 billion
•10/28/11: Obama games on student loans
•10/26/11: Wit and quick moves v. humanity and thoroughgoing honesty? It's no contest - or at least shouldn't be
•10/07/11: Baptists, bootleggers and Wall Street protesters
•10/05/11: Federal law will get you even if you watch out
•09/28/11: Leftist bugbears on the march
•09/23/11: Still hope for coal to help us
•09/21/11: Obama's Madoff ploy
•09/19/11: U.S. can't afford to wait until it happens
•09/14/11: Defending -- and strengthening -- gung ho collectivism
•09/12/11: A pipeline to better times
•09/08/11: Obama just keeps destroying jobs
•09/06/11: Ultra-feminists thwarting justice
•08/31/11: Corporations are people? Yes, Count the ways
•08/26/11: What an earthquake tells us about debt
•08/25/11: The tyranny of scientific consensus
•08/23/11: Fracking hardly a public health threat
•08/17/11: Why Obamacare won't control births
•08/15/11: Balanced budget amendment unbalanced idea
•08/10/11: Kerry's war on citizen speech
•08/05/11: Upside to the compromise leaving the door open for obnoxious maneuvers
•08/03/11: The people who may save America
•07/29/11: On making deals, Obama is no LBJ
•07/27/11: The threat behind the debt
•07/23/11: Mean opposition to means-testing
•07/20/11: Leftist babble makes debt crisis even worse
•07/18/11: Time to raise demagoguery ceiling
•07/13/11: Obama treating treaties badly
•07/08/11: Is decline of U.S. exaggerated?
•07/05/11: Not math deficiency, but demagoguery